Online events, such as online classes, are quickly growing in popularity and abundance. What previously could only occur within a physical location (e.g., a classroom), may now be accessible from the comforts of one's home. This has tremendous benefits for many individuals, as it allows people to not miss events due to a variety of conditions (e.g., illness, weather, etc.). Furthermore, the number of individuals capable of accessing events may now grow larger than any physical location could accommodate, with the individuals only needing a network connection to “attend” an event.
As an illustrative example, many school systems are implementing online classrooms to help eliminate “snow days” from occurring. Although most children loathe the idea of no more snow days, this comes as a tremendous advantage to the educational system because course materials may now be disseminated regardless of whether or not the school is open. However, as useful as online classes may be, inherent issues may arise from a student working from home and on their personal computer. For example, students attending an online class may also be able to surf the web and/or access one or more social media networks. As another example, students may have an online classroom running in the background and may play a video game or may converse with one or more family members or friends. This may be a costly problem in that students will not participant fully in the event and the event administrators (e.g., teachers) have little to no way of detecting such a situation.
Thus, it would be beneficial for there to be systems and methods that allow for participants of online events to be monitored to determine participation and attentiveness levels.